Gulf Oil Crisis: Yes, Obama Cares. So, What?

If you’ve been watching the fiasco surrounding the oil spill in the gulf, you already know the mainstream media meme that has cropped up around it. “Yes, President Obama has failed to stop the spill thus far,” the press tell us. “Yes, he’s demonstrated that his promises of supreme competence were overblown. Yes, his leadership has become so questionable that even James Carville has attacked him for it. Yes, some of the alternatives being offered in spite of all of this are being ignored, and yes, President Obama has failed to inspire confidence among everyday Americans about his ability to handle this crisis. But one thing we will not deny is that President Obama cares. He is a man of deep humanity, and deep empathy (and where have we heard that word before) for the suffering of those affected by the spill, and he cares.”

What I am about to ask will require readers to engage in a supreme act of charity: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, all the evisceration which Rush Limbaugh and every other conservative commentator have piled on this administration, all the evidence that the media will never believe anything but the very best about this President even as he takes this country down the road to serfdom at a speed that would make Dale Earnhardt Jr feel queasy, and despite all the emotionless, meaningless, platitude-laden babble that the President has been spewing since the spill began, I want the readers to assume, just for the sake of argument, that the media is telling the truth. Despite what appear to be severe rhetorical and emotional shortcomings in his speeches and his own bearing, imagine that underneath the hyper-rational mask, President Obama really does care.

So what?

Has that “caring” done anything to stop the spill? Has it given President Obama one single, solitary constructive idea about how to solve the problem (other than “Plug the Hole,” that is)? Does President Obama have the ability to fly out to the Gulf Coast and, like Ma-Ti in Captain Planet, dissolve the oil with nothing but the magically empathic effusions of his beating heart? And if not, then even if we concede that President Obama cares about those affected by this crisis, how is that remotely relevant to his ability to solve it? As per the usual liberal tag line, we are expected to believe that President Obama’s good intentions alone should assuage us of his competence, but have they done anything at all? The answer is as devastating as it is obvious: No.

And while we’re on the subject, let me ask another question. Who is it that has been coming up with ideas to solve this crisis? Is it the usual heroes of the Left, such as the environmental movement, the labor unions or the anti-globalization movement? Of course not – the people who are being tasked with solving this, and who have been trying all along, have been precisely the people that the Left, and their allies in the mainstream media, want us to believe lack empathy! It was not the Department of the Interior that came up with the Top-Kill method that, for a while, slowed the oil spill, or who have been tirelessly working to find ways to fix the problem even after that method failed.

It was the supposedly evil, profiteering corporation British Petroleum. It was not community organizers who provided aid, supplies and supervision during the crisis, nor was it they who even liberals called on to monitor the problem. It was the Coast Guard, a branch of the military, which as any Leftist will tell you, is a collection of homophobic, sexist, racist, bloodthirsty timocrats without a soul. It was not and is not a Democratic Governor who is overseeing the clean-up and trying his best to come up with ways to solve it because his job as a public servant depends on it. It is the supposedly heartless, Medicare-slashing, speech-flubbing alleged exorcist Republican Bobby Jindal! It is not ACORN that is thanklessly slaving away providing philanthropic aid and money to the aggrieved Gulf Coast. It is that horrible collection of “faith-based” hankerers after theocracy, ie Christian charities!

And finally, at least if some former members of the Department of the Interior are to be believed, it was not Barack Obama who came up with the strategy that is presently being employed to respond to this crisis with regard to the population. It was the Bush administration that did so in its response to Katrina, a strategy which allegedly demonstrated the heights of callousness on the part of the President, especially towards black people, as one undisciplined observer suggested.

Hey Kanye, Imma let you finish, but President Bush was the most caring President of all time! Of all time! And if you don’t believe me, ask Barack Obama, who seems to be lifting his playbook.

This tragedy is one that deserves all of our attention, naturally. And it is one about which we all should care, the President included. But that’s not enough. Solutions are demanded, and at the risk of making myself the object of a Care Bear stare, care doesn’t meet a bottom line, or save lives. Only hard work, diligence and hardheaded realism can do that. A pity that this administration is so short on all of the above.